Migration Case Study: Analysis of Top 3 Countries by Migration Outflows

Project by Andres Montes Lopez, Richa Gupta, Samikshya Siwakoti, Maximilian Rychwalski

Introduction

2017 World Migration Flows

The world

The Beginning

The number of international migrants in 2019 was estimated at 270 million. According to migrant data collected in 2017, one in every 30 people in this world is living outside of their country of birth.

Nearly two-thirds of the migrants are looking for work. But there have been massive displacements due to ongoing conflicts and violence. IOM’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre has said that a total of 41.3 million people were forced to flee their homes at the end of 2018 – a record since monitoring began in 1998.

We were interested in exploring more about this topic.

The most recent data in World Bank is available for the year 2017.

This graph shows that some countries stand out with higher than normal immigration like Bahrain, Maldives and Oman whereas some other countries are standing out because of all the people moving out of them. For example in Syria, for every 100 people in the country 12 people are moving to other countries.

We are interested in understanding what are the reasons that are making these people move out of their home countries.

We are removing Puerto Rico from our observations due to the fact that it is a part of United States and most of the migration that Puerto Rico faces is still inside of the country.

We are more interested in seeing the movement of people within countries and the reasons due to which this happens.

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Births in number of births including both sexes combined in thousands (Medium)

This graph displays the total births including both sexes combined in thousands (y-axis) development of South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela over time, specifically from 2020 to 2100 (x-axis). It is based on the medium projection variant, which the most popular type because it is based on the median of all trajectories based on a probabilistic model. In general it is interesting to note that Venezuela has the highest birth numbers out of those three countries and this number increases further until around 2030. Afterwards, Venezuela’s birth numbers decrease at the fastest rate and it is projected that it will have the lowest birth numbers from 2070 on. Syria seems to have an overall similiar trend with a delay of 20 years compared to Venezuela. However, South Sudan seems to be even further behind of those two countries, as it is projected that its birth numbers are going to increase constantly until 2070 before slowly decreasing.

Births in number of births including both sexes combined in thousands (Zero migration)

This graph displays the total births including both sexes combined in thousands (y-axis) development of South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela over time, specifically from 2020 to 2100 (x-axis). It is based on the zero migration variant, which assumes that there is no international migration. The curves for South Sudan as well as Venezuela are similiar to the ones based on the medium variant. However, Syria’s curve is drastically different as it is projected to have a decreasing amount of births from 2020 on. As mentioned within the Syria-tab a reason could be the return of people, who fled the country during the Syrian war, as Syria was the only country to have a larger population projection with migration than without.

Deaths in number of deaths including both sexes combined in thousands (Medium)

This graph decsribes the total deaths including both sexes combined in thousands (y-axis) development of South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela over time, specifically from 2020 to 2100 (x-axis). It is based on the medium projection variant, which the most popular type because it is based on the median of all trajectories based on a probabilistic model. In general Venezuela’s curve is concaved and South Sudan’s one convexed, which can probably be explained by the birth numbers from the previous graphs. South Sudan’s birth numbers are projected to be increasing and eventually surpassing the Venezuela’s numbers. Syria’s death numbers are increasing until around 2075 before decreasing for around 15 years. Afterwards, the deaths numbers increase once again. The short increase from 2090 to 2100 probably corresponds to the birth numbers from around 2030 to 2050.

Deaths in number of deaths including both sexes combined in thousands (Zero migration)

Word Cloud and Common Themes in News Coverages

As part of our analysis, we also looked at the most frequent common words that appeared in the article coverages that mentioned migration related terms for each of the top 3 countries of interest. In doing so, we utilized Web article coverages from Factiva database for 2019. The year was chosen to focus on the discussion surrounding the issues of immigrants prior to the COVID pandemic. The overall wordcloud from the corpus of articles is given below. It is followed by the top terms for each country from the set of common terms that existed in separate corpuses by country.

Venezuela

The Present

Venezuela is a country located at the northern end of South America. It occupies a roughly triangular area that is larger than the combined areas of France and Germany.

The economy of Venezuela is a market-based mixed economy based largely on the petroleum and manufacturing sectors, and has been in a state of total economic collapse since the mid-2010s. This has aled to a mass-exodus of people from the country which has been facing an economic and political turmoil since a long time.

The GDP per capita growth has been dipping since reaching its peak in 2004.

Let us see what the migration trends of the country has been.

A very large number of migrants from Venezuela are refugees and asylum seekers who have moved to other countries to search for a safe haven.

This map shows the destinations of the refugees and asylum seekers from Venezuela in the year 2019.

Word-Cloud for Article Coverages: Venezuela

The Future

Population development in Venezuela (Medium vs. zero-migration)

This graph illustrates the total population (y-axis) development of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela over time (x-axis). In the period from 1950 to 2019 the population is increasing constantly with the exception from 2015 to 2019. At that time Venezuela suffered from a dramatic financial crisis, which might have had an effect on the total population. From 2020 to 2100 the graph includes two different curves. The red one is the medium projection variant, which the most popular type because it is based on the median of all trajectories based on a probabilistic model. The blue line describes the zero migration variant, which assumes that there is no international migration and projects the population based on that. In general the curves show that the assumptions are that more people are entering the country than people are leaving it. However, the curves almost noticably interesect in 2100. It is a very far ahead projection of population of course, but it is interesting that both curves seem to decrease from around 2060 on.

South Sudan

The Present

Made up of the 10 southern-most states of Sudan, South Sudan is one of the most diverse countries in Africa. It is home to over 60 different major ethnic groups, and the majority of its people follow traditional religions.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011 as the outcome of a 2005 agreement that ended Africa’s longest-running civil war. Independence did not bring conflict in South Sudan to an end. Civil war broke out in 2013 when the president fell out with his then vice president, leading to a conflict that has displaced some 4 million people.

A very large number of migrants from South Sudan are refugees and asylum seekers who have moved to other countries to search for a safe haven.

This map shows the destinations of the refugees and asylum seekers from South Sudan in the year 2019.

Word-Cloud for Article Coverages: South Sudan

The Future

Population development in South Sudan (Medium vs. zero-migration)

This graph illustrates the total population (y-axis) development of South Sudan over time (x-axis). In the period from 1950 to 2019 the population is increasing almost constantly with the exception from around 1985 to 19959 as well as 2015 to 2019. South Sudan has a history of having issues with their census, which might be a reason for the two ‘bumps’ in the generally increasing curve. From 2020 to 2100 the graph includes two different curves. The red one is the medium projection variant, which the most popular type because it is based on the median of all trajectories based on a probabilistic model. The blue line describes the zero migration variant, which assumes that there is no international migration and projects the population based on that. Overall it seems like people tend to leave the country or at least there could be more people leaving the country than people coming in.

Syria

The Present

After Syria gained its independence in 1946, political life in the country was highly unstable, owing in large measure to intense friction between the country’s social, religious, and political groups. In 1970 Syria came under the authoritarian rule of Pres. Hafiz al-Assad. After Assad’s death in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became president. Bashar al-Assad ultimately continued his father’s authoritarian style of governments to quash political dissent. Long-suppressed internal tensions led to the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011.

A very large number of migrants from Syria are refugees and asylum seekers who have moved to other countries to search for a safe haven.

This map shows the destinations of the refugees and asylum seekers from Syria in the year 2019.

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Word-Cloud for Article Coverages: Syria

The Future

Population development in Syria (Medium vs. zero-migration)

This graph illustrates the total population (y-axis) development of the Syrian Arab Republic over time (x-axis). In the period from 1950 to 2019 the population is increasing constantly with the exception from around 2015 to 2019. A possible reason for the development during that period is the Syrian war. From 2020 to 2100 the graph includes two different curves. The red one is the medium projection variant, which the most popular type because it is based on the median of all trajectories based on a probabilistic model. The blue line describes the zero migration variant, which assumes that there is no international migration and projects the population based on that. Interestingly, the population increases at a faster rate when there is migration. That is suprising for a country that experienced a decrease in the total population due to war. However, a possible explanation could be the return of Syrians who fled and registered as refugees in other countries.